Creationism - National Center for Science Education

Bible-science approach, and continues to denounce the evolutionist-humanist forces
arrayed against true Christianity. 16
In 1985, Bartz wrote a front-page article in the Bible-Science Newsletter titled
“Can Extra-Biblical Scholarship Methods Measure or Correct the Canon of Scripture?” in
which he condemns attempts to “prove” the Bible true by appeal to science (Bartz makes
a distinction between “proving” and “demonstrating” biblical truth: the latter is good
Bible-science). In it he chastises attempts (obviously he is referring here to Faulstich,
and his supporter Lang) to use computers to prove Bible chronology.
Lang apparently felt that control of “his” BSA was taken away from him. In an
item in his Ark Today subtitled “Bible-Science Dissolved,” Lang informs his readers of
the changes at BSA thusly:
The Bible-Science Association, as it has been constituted in the past is being dissolved and a new
constitution and a new charter are being developed. The name “Bible-Science Association” will continue.
The more creationist organizations there are, the more spontaneous interest can be generated in
creationism. The new Bible-Science Association will be going in its own directions. Walter Lang is now
associated with the Genesis Institute, the Ark Project, The Chronology-History Institute, and the Creation
Evidence Museum of Glen Rose. [1987:11]
In 1984 Lang, with his wife, wrote Two Decades of Creationism, a chronicle of
modern creationism concentrating on his BSA ministry, and expounding on his call for
“creation evangelism.” Lang now devotes most of his energy to the Genesis Institute, a
new organization he founded which is affiliated with Eugene Faulstich’s Chronology-
History Research Institute, and the Genesis Institute’s publication which he edits, The
Ark Today, in which he continues in his old manner.
THE CALIFORNIA TEXTBOOK DISPUTES: 1969-1972
Walter Lammerts had been a Sunday School teacher of Jean Sumrall in a
Lutheran church in Pasadena. Sumrall attended Berkeley for a year, then got a job at
Caltech, where she met her husband. Their children attended a Lutheran school in
Redondo Beach, but when they moved to Costa Mesa they did not like the Lutheran
school there and had to look into the public schools. Jean Sumrall found that her new
neighbor, Nell Segraves, had similar concerns. Segraves, a Baptist, did not finish high
school, and worked in her husband’s business.
Sumrall and Segraves got involved in Orange County Republican politics, and
started attending public hearings in order to oppose anti-Christian teaching in the public
schools. Then came the 1961 Supreme Court decision, initiated by Madalyn Murray
(O’Hair), head of the American Atheist Society, which protected atheist children against
required religion in public schools. This shocked and upset Sumrall and Segraves. The
two housewives responded by devising a retaliatory argument: they gathered legal
opinions which convinced them that they could insure that Christian, creationist students
would not be subject to any teaching offensive to their religious beliefs. This strategy is
laid out in their booklet A Legal Premise for Moral and Spiritual Guidelines for
16 There has since been another shakeup at BSA. Overn and many other stalwarts have been ousted. Bartz
remains as editor, though in the new BSA’s quest for scientific respectability it remains to be seen if he can
last. He has in the past endorsed the most naive Bible-science claims, and has championed the more
sensational fundamentalist accusations against evolution